Viewers of Al Jazeera English’s live video feed of the attack also reacted with mostly smiley faced emoticons and thumbs up. In the screenshot below, just two out of 26 respondents react with a sad or angry face.

Numerous English speakers in the comments also expressed their shock at how the attack was being celebrated.

In addition, a Facebook post by a prison officer in the UK relates how, “Yesterday we had Muslims on the unit high fiving and cheering the news of the attacks,” and how the officer nearly lost his job for complaining about it.

This doesn’t mean that all Muslims celebrated the terror attack and undoubtedly most of them would condemn it.

However, the idea of ordinary, so-called “moderate Muslims” celebrating terrorist attacks drives fear into the heart of the leftist establishment because it demolishes the notion that Islam is a “religion of peace” and that only a tiny minority of Muslims support terrorism.

In reality, polls of Muslims living in both the Middle East and the west show alarmingly high levels of support for violent jihad.

A recent survey of young Muslims in France found that a third sympathize with using violence to further their ideology, which is the very definition of terrorism.

A 2006 Pew Global Attitudes study found that 42% of Muslims in France aged 18-29 thought that suicide bombings were sometimes justified.

Observe the media’s panicked reaction to Donald Trump’s claim that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attack. This issue cropped up again as part of Trump’s new interview with TIME, in which the interviewer accused him of lying.

But as Ann Coulter documents in her NY Times bestseller In Trump We Trust, there were innumerable credible reports of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the attack on the twin towers.

Remember when the mainstream media (fake news) claimed Trump was lying for saying Muslims in New Jersey celebrated 9/11? pic.twitter.com/ztp3oLJIZA